Abraham Saw the Pillar of Fire Over Mount Moriah

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He Split the Wood Before Dawn

Abraham got up while the house was still dark. He split the wood himself. He saddled the donkey. He took two young men. One was Ishmael, the son he had already sent into the wilderness once. The other was Eliezer, the steward who would have inherited everything if Isaac had never been born.

God had said go to the land of Moriah and offer the boy on one of the mountains there. Which mountain, He had not named. Abraham would be shown.

They walked north out of Beersheba. Four men and an animal. The knife rode wrapped against the donkey's flank. Isaac walked beside it and did not ask what it was for. The first day ended on a ridge that looked like the one behind it. The second day did the same. Nothing was marked. Nobody spoke the thing they were walking toward.

A Pillar Stood on One Ridge

On the third day they came up to a height called Zophim, the watchers.

Abraham lifted his eyes. On one mountain, not the others, a pillar of fire stood from the ground to the sky. It did not lean. It did not spread. It did not move. Above it hung a heavy cloud, and the glory of God rested on the cloud. The Shechinah (שכינה), the presence itself, sat on that ridge as if the mountain had been waiting for them.

Three days of unmarked country. Then this.

He had asked for a place. He was looking at one.

Isaac Named the Fire

"My son," Abraham said. "Do you see on that mountain what I see upon it?"

Isaac followed his father's eyes to the ridge. "I see," he said. "A pillar of fire and a cloud, and the glory of the Lord is upon the cloud."

The answer went into Abraham like cold water. The fire had not shown itself to one man who needed a map. It had shown itself to both of them, and the second of them was the boy who would be carrying the wood up that slope within the hour.

He knew then that Isaac had been accepted. The acceptance had come before a single stone of the altar was laid.

Abide Here With the Ass

Abraham turned to the two behind him. "Do you also see that which is upon that mountain?"

Ishmael and Eliezer squinted where he pointed. Rock. Scrub. Heat lifting off the stone.

"Nothing more than the other mountains," they said. "Only desert."

He looked at them a moment longer. The son who still had a claim. The servant who had once stood to inherit. The only two people on that road who might have taken hold of his arm and argued.

"Abide here with the ass," he told them. "You are like the ass. As little as it sees, so little do you see."

They sat down in the sand with the donkey. Ahead of them the ridge was still only rock.

His Own Mouth Promised Return

"I and Isaac my son will go yonder," Abraham said, "and we will worship there before the Lord, and this evening we will return to you."

He said it to close the talk. He did not hear himself. Yonder. Koh. The same word God had used on the night He took Abraham outside and showed him the sky: so, koh, shall your seed be (Genesis 15:5). Abraham had walked three days with a knife toward the end of that word. Then he stood at the foot of the mountain and used it to promise two men that two people would come back down before dark.

He shouldered the fire. Isaac took the wood. They started up.

Halfway, Isaac stopped. "My father."

"Here I am, my son."

"Here is the fire and the wood. Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham kept walking. "God will see to the lamb." Isaac asked again. The second time Abraham did not hide it. "Since you ask, He has selected you."

Isaac said he would give his soul. He said he was worried about his mother. They went both of them together, the wood on the boy's back, the fire in the father's hand, the pillar standing still on the ridge as if it had always been there.

Behind them the two young men waited beside the animal. For them the ridge ahead was still heat and a long walk home.